#bäver

[michaelnordeman]

Eurasian beaver/bäver. Värmland, Sweden (April 17, 2022).

[hedgehog-moss]

I randomly found a 500 page French book on OpenLibrary about the etymology of animal names so here are 10 (ish) fun facts:

the French word for poodle, “caniche” looks like it definitely comes from Latin “canis” (dog) but no! It comes from cane / canard (duck) because it was a waterfowl-hunting dog—and its name in English, Swedish, German, Dutch (poodle, pudel, puedel) also reflects this dog’s affinity with water (from pudeln = to splash about). It’s like otters, whose name come from the same root as water...

the canary on the other hand is named after canis / dog, since it comes from the Canary Islands which, according to Pliny the Elder, were named after the huge dogs that lived there at some point. Some historians think these mysterious big dogs were actually seals or big lizards. Then a bird ended up with the name ‘from the dog place’ though it’s unclear if dogs were ever truly involved. (Meanwhile Spain / Hispania comes from the Phoenician i-shepan-im, the place with rabbits.) I like the idea of ancient humans seeing seals or lizards and going “weird dogs”. Like how ancient Greeks saw hyenas and named them “pigs, I guess?”

the fox has a great diversity of names in Europe: fox / Fuchs, zorro, räv, volpe, raposa, lisu, róka, renard... In French it used to be called ‘goupil’, from the same Latin root as the Italian ‘volpe’, but then the mediaeval cycle of poems known as Le Roman de Renart, about an unprincipled fox named Renart, became so popular that renard became the word for fox and goupil disappeared. It’s like if 500 years from now bears in English were called baloos. (The English and German words for fox come from the indo-european root puk- which means tail, like Hungarian ‘farkas’ (wolf) which means tail-having, or squirrel, from the Greek words for shade + tail, there are actually lots of animals that are just “that one with a tail”...)

French has a word for baby rabbit (lapereau) derived from Latin leporellus (little hare) and we used to have a word for adult rabbit (conin) from Latin cuniculus (rabbit)—related to the German Kaninchen, Italian coniglio, Spanish conejo, etc. But ‘conin’ in Old French also meant pussy (there were mediaeval puns about this in the Roman de Renart) and at some point I guess people were like okay, it was funny at first but we’ve run this joke into the ground, and a new and politically correct word appeared for adult rabbit (lapin) based on the pre-existing word for baby rabbit (lapereau).

The english bear is thought to come from the proto-IE root bher-, for brown—I love how Finnish has so many nicknames and euphemisms for “bear” ranging from “honey palm” to “apple of the forest” and English is like... dude’s brown. Same amount of effort with the Swedish and Danish words for fox, räv / ræv, from a root that means reddish-brown. (And the Hungarian word for lion, oroszlán, along with the Turkish ‘aslan’, comes from proto-Turkic arislan / arsilan which comes from arsil which means brown...) And since brown was already taken, ‘beaver’ (+ German, Dutch, Swedish...: Biber, bever, bäver) has been speculated to come from bhe-bhrus-, a doubling of the original root so... brownbrown.

English foal / German Fohlen / French poulain / Italian puledro all come from the proto-IE root pu- which means small (e.g. Latin puer and Greek pais = child)—then the French ‘poulain’ became ‘poulenet’ with the diminutive -et (so, a smallsmall animal) and poulenet became powny in Scots then pony in English, which was then re-imported by French as ‘poney’. Also the Spanish word for donkey, burro, comes from Latin burricus = small horse, and in French Eeyore is named Bourriquet with the -et diminutive ending, so we just keep taking small horses and turning them into smallsmall horses...

The boa (bo(v)a) shares the same etymology as bovine / bœuf / beef, due to a widespread belief that some snakes suckled milk from cows. Pliny the Elder stated this as fact and (not to bully him but) modern research tells us “there is no empirical basis for saying snakes like mammal milk; experiments, indeed, have shown that captive snakes systematically refuse to drink milk”

I was disappointed to learn that antelope comes from Greek anthólops which referred to a mythical creature, because I grew up convinced the origin of the word (antilope in French) was anti-lupus, as in, the gazelle is the generic prey so as a concept it’s the opposite of the wolf, the generic predator. Wolf and anti-wolf. Though it raised the question of why we don’t have antilions (zebra), anticats (mice) and antibears (salmons)

Many European languages have named kites after some sort of flying animal: in English it comes from the word for owl, in Portuguese from the word for parrot, in Italian from eagle, and in French it’s cerf-volant aka flying-deer. There’s an interesting hypothesis for this! Kites came to Europe from China, where they were often shaped like dragons or snakes, and snake is serpent in French and serpe in Old French, so it’s possible that kites were serpe-volants aka flying-snakes. But the ‘p’ and ‘v’ next to one another were a hassle to pronounce so the p got dropped and it became ser-volant, then ‘ser’ which isn’t a word started being mistaken for ‘cerf’ which is pronounced ‘ser’ but means deer... (We did it again with chauve-souris (bald-mouse = bat), which comes from the Gaulish cawa-sorix aka owl-mouse—which makes more sense as a name for bats! similar to the German Fledermaus, flying-mouse, and Spanish murciélago, blind-mouse. But Gaulish ‘cawa’ was mixed up with Latin ‘calva’ = chauve = bald, so now a French bat is a bald-mouse)

I love etymology, it’s all flying deer and dogs named splash and snakes named cow and ponies named smallsmall and five animals named brown and three named tail—words acquire a veneer of linguistic respectability over the centuries and we forget that fundamentally everyone just says whatever

[svenskjavel]

Meddelande till svenska folket: Irma Lehtosalo (Markoolios mamma) är en gem för bra för denna värld. Vad har hon gjort undrar ni kanske?

Fött Markoolio

Hittat ett nytt djur kallat bävling (inte att förvirras med bäver eller grävling)

3. Släppt en låt för att informera om den invasiva arten bävling

[forislynx]

Jag tillbringar en avsevärd del av min tid med att observera de vilda djurens vanor, mina djurgrannar. [...] Men när jag begrundar att de ädlare djuren blivit utrotade här – puma, panter, lodjur, järv, varg, björn, älg, hjort, bäver, kalkon, etc. etc. – kan jag inte annat än känna att jag lever i ett tamt och så att säga stympat land. Skulle inte dessa större och vilda djurs rörelser fortfarande ha varit viktiga? Är det inte en lemlästad och ofullständig natur som jag är hemmastadd i? [...] När jag tänker på de ljud och läten som var, på migrationerna och vanorna och byte av päls och fjäderdräkt som ledsagade våren och markerade årets övriga årstider, påminns jag om att mitt liv i naturen, detta speciella kretslopp av naturfenomen som jag kallar ett år, är bedrövligt ofullständigt. Jag lyssnar till en konsert där många partier saknas. Hela det civiliserade landet har i viss mån förvandlats till stad, och jag är den där medborgaren som jag själv beklagar.

Henry David Thoreau, Dagboksanteckningar 1837-1861

[anderslindberg]

Hur mycket får en älg kosta? Eller en bäver?

https://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/a/Xb11zm/hur-mycket-far-en-alg-kosta-eller-en-baver?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[klisterklockan]

Framtida punkbandsnamn

Äntligen visar Klisterklockan upp en lista tänkbara punkbandsnamn med samma tåga som KurtSunesMedBerit och Hörförståelse. Använd de gärna. Mycket nöje!

Trångsynth Bäver krök Korsett Korsetten Kränger Lysande liggsår Grannarna gråter Höga hästar Konstantins Opel Kanadakollo Vit vittring Puhs parkett Kom en gast Laxbak Yxvårta Ven i dig Bojans hand Staffan Lings lever Lungmos Borsta brorsan Jarls porslin Skinksadel Paltvrål Heta högers Babars styvbrors bord Jacks son i palle Bandysex Zack Ta Neer Aber och gin Prästen pimplar Bongotrauma

[jambrandwich]

Today's Word/Phrase Stuck in my Head!

Rädda skogen; ät en bäver! (Save the forest; Eat a beaver!)

[matsel]

En del tar aldrig semester. #bäver #beaver #sommar #sverige https://www.instagram.com/p/CfxEI3Ir84p/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[mylittleliterarian]

”Det sjunger i skogen och kvittrar i träden, det drillar och tjippar och piper.” Följ med på utflykt och möt våra nordiska djur. Åsa Linds lyrik hoppar och far som en porlande bäck mellan Anna Bengtssons rika illustrationer. I varje bild målas en berättelse upp. ”Brum Skogens djur i ord och bild” får oss att längta ut i grönskan, till doften av mossa och jord, ljudet av tallarna som knäpper.

https://www.bokus.com/bok/9789187033940/brum-skogens-djur-i-ord-och-bild/

https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/brum-skogens-djur-i-ord-och-bild-9789187033940?gclid=EAIaIQobChMInbOg48294gIV1UkYCh21ZAAVEAQYASABEgKTkfD_BwE

[michaelnordeman]

Beaver/bäver. Värmland, Sweden (April 17, 2022). 

[survivethejive]

Either a very short lumberjack gave up on this or there be beavers about! #beaver #beavers #bäver (at Lake Ekoln)

[stinkek]

Let’s see if anyone knows the game this intro is from...

[dagenssvenska]

Jag skicka bäver-memen till min pappa och han svara "Jag har redan firat med att fälla träd på grannens hus", en riktig sak han råkade göra i höstas, och sen dess har jag inte kännt fred

Älskar't

[winam-playground-equipment]

Project: Justin Bäver Lekplats

Sân chơi thú vị dành cho trẻ với con "Hải ly siêu to khổng lồ" trong khu vực vui chơi. Đây chắc chắn sẽ là một sân chơi mà trẻ sẽ rất yêu thích, đặc biệt đối với những em thích loài hải ly siêu dễ thương nay.

📞📞📞Liên hệ với chúng tôi để thay đổi khoảng sân vui chơi của bạn. ------------- 🌐 : winam.asia 📮 : info@winam.asia 🏣 : Phòng 101, Số 226/4A Lê Trọng Tấn, Phường Tây Thạnh, Quận Tân Phú, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Việt Nam. 📲 : 0915 662 662

[linaes]

en chans till.

jag skulle aldrig igen släppa taget.

tredje gången gillt, var det inte så?

[fluffyanny-blog]

Beavers working area ☡🐹🌳 #beaver #bäver #majavat #finnishnature #finland_photolovers #mittösterbotten #thisisfinland #lovelyfinland #ourfinland #visitfinland #river #nature #naturephotography #suomi100vuotta #suomenvalokuvaajat #suomi #finland #spring #vår #kevät #fluffyannyphotography